The all-male priesthood of the Catholic Church “is traced to the will of Christ, not to decisions made by the Church”, according to nun and theologian Sr Sara Butler.Sr Butler, the first American woman appointed by Pope John Paul II to the International Theological Commission, had formerly been a supporter of the ordination of women.
In 1978, she headed a task force of the Catholic Theological Society of America that came out in support of female priests.
However, as she began to explore the issue in her role as an increasingly prominent theologian, her thinking began to change.
Now, in a new book - "The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church" - she attempts to explain the underpinnings of the all-male priesthood to doubters and sceptics who think the way she used to.
Sr Butler argues that the church's teachings must be better explained, because many Catholics see the all-male priesthood as a symbol of patriarchal power and sexism, and many more who stay silent are probably befuddled.
"Their confidence in the church's teaching authority has been badly eroded," she said.
She argues the case that the all-male priesthood is grounded in Jesus' choice of 12 male apostles and the Catholic Church's sustained understanding of what this meant for the priesthood.
"The answer is discovered in a tradition of practice that is traced back to the Lord's choice of the 12," she says.
To change the church's traditional understanding of the priesthood, she insists, would be to change the priesthood itself and disconnect the church from the apostles, ending what Catholics believe to be their church's God-given power to teach.
In recent decades, "Christian feminists" have seen many Protestant denominations and Anglicans bring women into ministry, she suggests.
As a result, she said, many have lost sight of the Catholic Church's different understanding of the priesthood.
Her book explores theological arguments that the priest is a sacramental sign of Jesus - "who is and remains a man" - and that Scripture presents Jesus as a "bridegroom" wedded to the church, a role exclusive to men.
Butler's book also dismisses the idea that women have no leadership roles in the church, saying they can serve as volunteers or professionals at the parish and diocesan levels, as well as at Catholic institutions.
The book has been described as a defence of Pope John Paul II's 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which insisted that the priesthood had to remain an all-male institution.
The pontiff famously declared that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."
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